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Hold fast to me, he'd said to Janet, and he'd meant it, even as a little part of him had been unsure he'd even wanted to be saved. But he'd said it. In truth, he hadn't really believed she would come. He certainly hadn't really believed she'd throw her arms around him, tight as a vise, angry and desperate and--somehow, somehow despite all he had done to her, despite all he had said was to come--loyal and loving.
For a second, as she pulled him into her arms, he thought he could feel the child in her, that the quickening had already begun. Perhaps it had. In the world he lived in, time was an illusion, after all.
Then the pain overtook anything else, and he was trapped within two bars of iron. Janet was human, wholly human, more human than anything he had touched or tasted for so long. The sheer power of her human will had been temptation, when he'd met her; now it felt like a prison, the animal stench of her so close in his nostrils.
But he could not have pushed her away had he wanted to. His body was no longer in his possession.
Days and nights with the Queen had been honey and wine, a dream where time was but a plaything. Now the years crashed onto him like a rockslide.
He felt his spine shatter as the Queen drew it out past his neck, past where his head had been, his arms collapsing into his body as he took the form of a snake, writhing, slippery.
Janet held on, still iron and immobile.
His shoulders broadened back out, broader than his human form, and he was an aurochs. The hooves split his feet. He wanted to cry out, but he could no more move his own mouth than move the stars in the sky above. He bucked and roared, and tossed the great horns on his head. His senses were overcome; sight was a blur, hearing was noise, smell could no longer distinguish flower from fae from woman.
Janet held on.
Now the Queen was angry, and the forms changed more quickly. He was a bird, a beast, a strange thing that lived in the ocean and suffocated for lack of water. He was things he had never seen before, things the Queen had never spoken to him of, and the pain grew with every transformation. She broke him apart and smashed him together again and again, over and over, and an odd ecstasy began to fill him.
He remembered learning about martyrs, when he was human. Remembered childhood, innocence.
He had never cried for his parents. The Queen had made him careless of such things.
Would he cry, when this was done?
Janet still held him fast, and her embrace burned cold into his skin, the humanity seeping out of her and filling him again, slow, and sure.
Once, time had meant nothing to him. Once, he did not feel pain.
This is what human means, he thought. This is what I sacrifice. This is what my life will be. Pain and struggle. Even when it is relentless, remorseless.
But any choice he might have had was gone. For a moment, he heard another heartbeat roaring in his ears; not Janet's, the child's. It will grow old and die, as I will. It will get sick. It will hurt, as I do. Then another roar began, the Queen's, thick with fury, and he soon heard nothing save noise.
And as quickly as it had began it was over, and he was returned to the human he once had been, pain echoing in every bone.
The Queen said something, though his ears were still ringing too much for him to understand.
Janet was holding his hand.
"Come on," she said, and led him away on feet that ached with every step. "We're going home."
He just nodded, and let her lead him.